These engravings are all about 400 yeas
old! They illustrate early European voyages and travels to hitherto unknown
parts of the world and are among the earliest copperplate images ever
published. They reveal the diverse customs and cultures of people who
lived in distant parts of the world but they also tell a story of discovery,
greed, exploitation and bitter rivalry among the nations and religions
of Europe during the earliest years of colonial expansion. This website
represents a lifetime’s collection of these engravings, and it is
offered herewith to the discerning viewer as a unique opportunity that
can never be repeated, so it’s first come, first served.

All the images are genuine antique copperplate engravings, published in the
years specified in the descriptions. They were the work of a sixteenth century,
Flemish goldsmith and engraver, called Theodore de Bry, who was born in 1528,
of Protestant parentage, in present-day Belgium. [Please check ‘Wikipedia’,
for more information about Theodore
de Bry.] As he grew up under the increasing
influence of Catholic Spain, controls for heresy began to be imposed by the
infamous ‘Council of Blood’ upon the Protestant peoples of Flanders.
Consequently, de Bry was obliged to escape persecution and eventually settle
in Frankfurt, Germany, where he began publishing these engravings in 1590 and
where his two sons continued his good work.

Specifications
The items described and illustrated here are all genuine original antique prints.
They are therefore not re-issues, reprints or modern facsimiles. They were
printed on hand-made paper: typically about 25-30 cm high by 20 -25 cm wide
but those of larger format are marked with asterisks, and their sizes are
shown at the end of their descriptions. They comprise of two distinct printing
processes, carried out on different machines and possibly also in different
workshops. The illustrations themselves were impressed from engraved copperplate
images, while the titles above the illustrations and the descriptive texts
below, either in Latin or German with illuminated initial letters, and were
printed in letterpress as shown in the examples below.

** Although only the engravings are illustrated, here below the typical layout
of the Latin and German titles and texts are included in most
of these engravings.

--

Click mage above for larger view

Most of the descriptions given here are based on translations
of these texts but, for reasons of clarity or historical interest, some have
been corrected, added to or up-dated. By today’s standards, some of the
descriptions may seem quaint or even fantastic but they convey the limited
understanding and knowledge that Europeans had at that time, of these hitherto
unknown peoples and their diverse cultures, when first they were discovered.

Condition and Authenticity
The way to recognise the age of a genuine antique engraving, printed on hand-made
paper, is to hold it up to the light and you will see white parallel ‘laid-lines’,
like watermarks, about 2-3cms apart, running along the length of the paper
where it had originally been laid out upon wires to dry. Either side of these
laid-lines you will see a browning effect, which is a measure of aging and
cannot be faked - even in modern hand-made paper. The prices are all based
on these items being in good condition and not damaged, although the blank
margins or edges to the paper leaves themselves may be uneven or contain minor
nicks or tears, not affecting the printed images. For the sake of protection
in transit, they will be sent flat-packed* and lightly tacked with archival
tape between modern, acid-free window mounts and backboards, and a guarantee
of authenticity will accompany every purchase. As such, they make prestigous
wall-decorations for the home, office or boardroom. No matter where displayed,
they are sure to generate curiosity, fascination and interest.

* Some of the larger items will be sent, carefully rolled inside strong cardboard
tubes.

How to order
Please check first by emailing
HERE.
You only need quote the reference number(s) of the item(s) you are interested
in and I will immediaterly let you know about availability and give you a condition
report. Then, if you still want to buy the item(s), let me know your mailing
address, and your order will be sent to you at that address immediately I have
been notified of your receipt of payment by PayPal. All the prices are quoted
in British Pounds Sterling (£) [See ‘Currency
Converter’.] but the cost of packing and postage will be add to the
invoice. To all overseas countries, transit usually takes about one week. If,
on receipt of the goods, you are not satisfied with any item(s) and return it
or them promptly by recorded delivery to: John Faupel, Lemon Cottage, Truro,
Cornwall TR3 6ED, UK, a full refund will be made to you, immediately upon their
receipt. Thank you for your kind interest and hasppy browsing.

Theodore de Bry may never have conceived of
this great publication project had it not been for his chance encounter with
a French painter, Jacques le Moyne in London over 400 years ago. Both men were
the victims of religious persecution and passionately interested in the arts
so, naturally, from this first meeting they got on well together. Although,
at the time, de Bry knew nothing of publishing and his subsequent friendship
with le Moyne was only transient, it deserves to be recorded in the chronicles
of history, since there grew from this chance encounter one of the most profusely
illustrated collections of voyages and travels ever published.

Theodore de Bry was probably born of
Calvinist parentage, about the year 1528, in the Flemish town of Liège, near Brussels. As a young man he followed in his father’s footsteps and
apprenticed as a goldsmith. The success of the family business can be gleaned
from one of his early recollection1:

I was the
offspring of parents, born of honourable standing, affluent circumstances and
among the most respected ranks of the inhabitants of Liège.

And to his subsequent profession he
evidently applied the usual Calvinist zeal for he went on to say:

But man was
not bereft of wit to provide for himself: it is not by sleep or idle hours that
famous men shine forth but by unwearied pains, indefatigable labour and the
most burning love of truth.

But the Catholic government of Spain, which ruled the Netherlands at the time, became increasingly worried about the reformist
attitudes of the Protestant faith. The new religion was particularly popular
among artisans and skilled craftsmen of the southern Low Countries, such as the
de Brys, who had been prevented from playing any part in the running of their
own government. Some converted to the new faith for reasons of political
expediency, others because of genuine conviction. Either way, the authorities’
reaction was the same: all outspoken Protestant-thinking was condemned and
progressive literature, banned or destroyed. Gerard Mercator, for example, who
was emerging as the founder of modern geography, was arrested and imprisoned
for heresy in 1544. To make matters worse, all citizens of the Spanish
Netherlands were subjected to ever increasing tax demands in order to finance
Spanish wars overseas with which they, quite understandably, felt no patriotic
affinity.

In 1555, when Charles V of Spain abdicated and his son, Philip II, took the throne, the oppression became worse. The
Duke of Alva was sent out from Spain to enforce order under his infamous
‘Council of Blood’ regime and any householders that was considered a threat to
the authorities were attacked, usually in the dead of night, and robbed of all
their worldly possessions. It is quite likely that the de Brys were subjected
to such persecution, for de Bry himself made an oblique reference to just such
an event:

… stripped of
all these belongings by … the attacks of robbers, I had to content against
such adverse chance that only by my art could I fend for myself. Art alone
remained to me of ample patrimony left me by my parents. On that, neither
robbers nor the rapacious bands of thieves could lay hands.2

Although we do not know the date of this traumatic
event, it may have been in the 1560s. It was a bleak decade: in the winter
of 1565, for example, the sea froze and icebergs blocked the Baltic ports.
Trade was severely hit and the following Sring the harvest failed, resulting
in famine with riots at the corn market of Gent. Such hardships are skilfully
depicted by the Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel, the elder, who lived and worked
in the same regions as de Bry. His ‘Hunters in the Snow’, which is dated 1565,
evokes that harsh winter landscape but there are more sinister motives to some
of his paintings. His ‘Slaughter of the Innocents’, for example, probably painted
the previous winter, hints at Spanish imperial oppression. It purports to illustrates
the wholesale murder of infants, when King Herod heard about the birth of ‘Christ
the King’ but beneath this biblical veil lay a contemporary interpretation.

De Bry’s departure form Liège may also have
been prompted by the birth of his two sons, Johann Theodore in 1561 and Johann
Israel, who was born soon after. Although many Flemish Protestants went to England to escape persecution, others sought refuge in the Lutheran state of Frankfurt. Yet it was
to Strasbourg that de Bry seems to have made his first move. He and his family
would have been quite safe there, for the German-speaking city had become a
stronghold for the new Protestant religion. Even the great Huguenot leader,
Jean Calvin and his family had been happily settled in Strasbourg until 1541
when they were unexpectedly called back to Geneva.

Having been ‘stripped of all his
belongings’, starting a new life with a young family to support must have been
difficult for de Bry. He may have needed to supplement his work as a goldsmith
with commissions for the new art of engraving on copper. This was a skill at
which goldsmiths were becoming increasingly adept due to the growing demand for
printed imagery. De Bry was probably influenced in his style of engraving by the
delicate fancy and classical taste of another religious refugee, the esteemed
French jeweller-engraver, Étienne de Laulne, who had also settled in Strasbourg.3

Although de Bry’s earliest known
copperplate engraving is dated 1586, he had probably seen its potential and had
acquired the skills of the gravure much earlier. Certainly, by the mid fifteen
hundreds, the old fashioned and generally rather impractical woodblock method
of relief-printing, perfected by Dürer, was beginning to be replaced by the much
finer medium of intaglio printing from copperplates and a number of goldsmiths
and artist-engravers, especially from the Low Countries, were quick to take
advantage of this new medium.

By 1570 the first universal atlas, with 53
double-page copperplate engraved maps, appeared in print. This was the
celebrated ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’, by Abraham Ortelius of Antwerp, which ran
into many editions and was printed in several languages over the next 42 years.
While browsing through the pages of this monumental work depicting strange
lands, de Bry must have been filled with awe and admiration. Perhaps this was
the seed that inspired his subsequent publications, for Ortelius’s
map-embellishments, with swash lettering and ornate strapwork cartouches, are
rather similar to those that began to appear in his own volumes twenty years
later.

How long de Bry stayed in Strasbourg is not
known, although it may have been only a few years. It has been suggested4
that he had connections with Frankfurt as early as 1570. Certainly, by 1588 he
was well enough established to have petitioned for citizenship of that city.5
Yet, two years before this we know he was temporarily working in London. He had been commissioned, with others, to prepare copperplates for the English
edition of the first sea atlas ever published6. While engaged in this
work, he was unexpectedly asked to engrave an illustration of the funeral
procession of Sir Philip Sidney, who had died in 1588 from an infected injury
during his military campaigns against the Spanish rule in the Netherlands.

It is probably their mutual association
with the Sidney family that resulted in that chance encounter in London between Theodore de Bry and Jacques le Moyne. Sir Philip Sidney’s mother, Lady
Mary, was a patron of the arts and had probably put up money for Jacques le
Moyne’s one and only publication – a small quarto volume, which appeared in
print in that same year. It contained a dedication to her in the Preface,
followed by numerous woodcut illustrations of plants and animals. Although
these were drawn by le Moyne himself , they appear crudely executed compared to
the new technique of copperplate engraving. So, when the two men met in 1586,
the French artist must have realised de Bry could help him with the engravings
for another, altogether more ambitious publishing project that he had been
harbouring ever since his return from the New World over twenty years earlier.

In 1564, le Moyne had sailed to Florida with the French Huguenots, under the command of Captain René de Laudonnière. They
had built a fort near the estuary of the St. Johns River and in attempting to
set up a colony had sown the first seed of Protestantism on, what is today, United States soil. Le Moyne was the colonists’ official artist and he had been
commissioned to observe and paint the Indians and their exotic way of life. In
fact, he was probably the first European artist ever to do serious ethnographic
studies of the indigenous peoples of North America. But the colony had been
prone to misfortune from the start and the paintings were lost or destroyed
when the Spanish attacked and killed many of the colonists fifteen months after
they had first settled. No more than a handful of Frenchmen, including le
Moyne himself, had managed to escape the terrible slaughter by wading all night
through swamps and getting aboard a French ship anchored off-shore.

On his return to Europe, le Moyne vowed to
publish his remarkable observations, even though they would have to be worked
up from memory. So, when he unexpectedly met the engraver, de Bry, twenty-one
years later, the opportunity suddenly presented itself to him. Both men
quickly became good friends and de Bry willingly agreed to transcribe le
Moyne’s paintings for him. Unfortunately, de Bry’s family were still in Frankfurt so he had to return briefly, perhaps to present his petition for citizenship to
the authorities of that city. This he did and the following year returned to London to begin work on the transcriptions of le Moyne’s paintings but the Frenchman had
quite suddenly died in the meantime. After the initial shock, de Bry must have
quickly realised how important it was to save the project and probably, in a
moment of rash speculation, persuaded le Moyne’s widow to sell him all her
husband’s drawings and paintings in order that he might publish them himself.

Even though it has been suggested that it
was de Bry’s single-minded intention to publish the work from the outset, there
is no evidence to support this view. In fact, there are at least two reasons
for believing de Bry’s decision was fortuitous, taken only after he learnt of
le Moyne’s death. First, as much is hinted at in the Preface to his initial
publication. This states:

‘ … when the
good Theodor de Bry of Liège, a citizen of Frankfort, was visiting London in
England, he formed a deep friendship with Morgues [the English derivation of le
Moyne] and at the same time gathered information on a great many questions to
do with the story, so that the publication of these matters was agreed between
them. Thenon Morgues’s death, the aforesaid Theodor bought the
narrative for himself from the widow in the year 15876.5….’

But there is a second and perhaps more
convincing reference, written by Richard Hakluyt in his Epistle to: ‘A Notable
Historie containing foure voyages made by certaine French Captaynes unto Florida’7.
This Hakluyt had translated from French into English and published in 1587.
Hakluyt was one of Sir Philip Sidney’s closest friends – they had been at Christ Church, Oxford, together and had passionately believed that the colonisation of ‘that
vast and New World of America’ was the only solution to the problems of
over-population and unemployment in Protestant England. Evidently, just before
le Moyne’s sudden death, Hakluyt had written in the introduction to this book:

‘ … of
chiefest importance are lively drawen in colours at your no smale charges by
the skilfull painter James Morgues [Jacques le Moyne] , yet living in the
Blacke-fryers in London … which was an eye-witnesse of the goodnes &
fertilitie of those regions, & hath put downe in writing many singularities
which are not mentioned in this treatise: which he meaneth to publish together
with the purtraitures before it be long …’

Although le Moyne had unexpectedly died
soon after this, the implication is clear: he had intended to publish his own
work on the ‘goodness & fertilitie of those regions’. So it was
probably to Hakluyt that de Bry now turned for advice on how he himself might
publish the paintings. Even though de Bry would have had no difficulty in
transcribing these paintings onto copperplate, his knowledge, both of the
subject-matter and of the publishing process were strictly limited. Hakluyt,
however, was not only versed in publishing, he knew more than most of his
contemporaries about voyages to America. In fact, five years earlier he had
published his: ‘Diverse Voyages’8 and was currently amassing a wealth of
relevant data for his magnum opus; the now famous: ‘Principall Navigations’9.

More important, though, he had the right
contacts. Among his many friends and acquaintances was the brilliant young
mathematician and astronomer to be, Thomas Hariot, who was employed to look
after Sir Walter Ralegh’s library. Only three years previously, Hariot had been
with an expedition to Virginia10 and, in less than a year, had surveyed
the coasts and rivers around Pamlico Sound. He also collected together a mass
of data about the ‘beasties’, ‘fishe’, ‘foule’ and ‘fruite’, along with the
produce and people of that region. Moreover, an artist, John White, had been
on the same expedition and his paintings of the Algonquin Indians were now
beginning to collect dust in Ralegh’s library. In fact, White had been put in
charge of a second colony and was already on his way back to the New World,
while Hariot had just published11, or was about to publish, his own
findings concerning that region.

Hakluyt must have quickly realised that the
combined material, both from White and Hariot’s field work on ‘Virginia’ would make an ideal companion piece to de Bry’s proposed Florida publication.
If, therefore, he were prepared to publish a Virginia volume before his
intended Florida volume, Hakluyt would help him and arrange with Ralegh to loan
him the material to do so. This, surely, was an offer that could not be
refused. De Bry could hardly have believed his luck; he had only recently
arrived back in London for a one-off engraving commission and would now be able
to return to Frankfurt with an invaluable wealth of original manuscript data
for, not just one but two publications.

What little the European public knew about
the New World at that time came mainly from hearsay and the few illustrated
books11.5 about that newly discovered land
contained only a few simple woodcuts, inspired more by myth than by
observation. Moreover, in that very year,1588, the defeat of the Spanish
Armada would break the stranglehold that Catholic Spain had had over the Americas from the time of its discovery. The door had now suddenly opened for Protestants
to go forth and colonise those lands. Hakluyt’s dream would soon become reality
and de Bry, who for personal reasons was incensed by the spread of Catholicism,
could play his part in encouraging the ‘rightful’ claim of Protestants to
settle in America, with the publication of his two books.

Fired by religious
zeal, de Bry arrived back in Frankfurt eager to start work on publication. His
two sons could help him as they were now in their twenties and apprenticed in
the art of gravure. He also engaged a Dutch engraver, Gysbert van Veen and
employed the services of ‘a verye worshipfull frend’ to prepare the translations
of the text. To the 21 engraved plates that they transcribed from John White’s
paintings12,
de Bry was now able to add below each plate a brief description, already supplied
by Hariot, along with his folding map of that region. A new plate, composed
by de Bry, himself, called: ‘The arrival of the Englishmen in Virginia’ was
added at the beginning to demonstrate that nation’s claim to that land.

An introductory plate of
‘Adam and Eve’, also designed and engraved by de Bry, was included and, added
at the end, were five plates of Picts, transcribed from some of John White’s
earlier watercolours. Then, for the introduction to the volume, de Bry
re-issued verbatim the text from Hariot’s little book. TheEnglish
edition was completed in April 1590. In that same year, translations into
Latin, German and French quicklyfollowed. On completion of the
text and plates, de Bry instructed his printer,Johann Wechel, to begin the
printing, so that the copperplates and intaglio text could be collated and
bound in small folio for sale via the celebrated Frankfurt bookseller,
Sigismund Feyeraband.

Sales exceeded everyone’s
wildest expectations. While the whole family tried to cope with the insatiable
demand for the Virginia volume, Theodore de Bry busily worked on the
copperplates for the Florida volume. Unfortunately, though, with le Moyne now
resting in his grave, he had only the incomplete paintings and manuscript
notes, along with Laudonniere’s text as source data to work on. There was now
no person alive with first-hand knowledge of Florida to turn to for help in
putting all this data together.

Working alone, de Bry would undoubtedly
have found this second publishing project much more difficult to compile into
a coherent whole than the Virginia volume. For his introductory text, he used
a brief account of le Moyne’s experiences in Florida, along with an engraving
he had done of Noah’s Ark. And, in order to follow the same format as the Virginia
volume, a folding map of Florida, whose peculiar configuration tells another
story, was also included. Despite the embellishments of this map, which clearly
indicate de Bry’s composition, its important cartographic origins are unknown,
even though one study goes a long way to solving the mystery13. There followed forty-two engravings,
each with a title above and descriptive text below. The first seven of these
engravings illustrated the pioneering voyage of the French to that region in
1562, under Jean Ribaut, with Laudonnière as second in command. This was two
years before le Moyne ever set foot on Florida soil. Evidently, these first
engravings must have been de Bry’s own compositions, derived from the text in
Laudonniere’s book, which in most cases was also used for the descriptions.
The first of these shows the French landing and demonstrated their claim to
that land.

All the subsequent
illustrations relate to the second voyage, under Laudonnière’s solecommand
when le Moyne was present, between June 1564 and September 1565. The trouble is
that none13.5 of the original le Moyne paintings
or manuscript-notes are extant, so we cannot say for certain how truly
representative these engravings are of his work. The result is probably a
curious mixture of fact and fiction. A careful study13.7 of
the forty-two plates that appeared in the ‘Florida’ volume would suggest about
ten were entirely de Bry’s own invention, thirteen were very loosely derived
from le Moyne’s work and another nineteen were probably principally transcribed
from the artist’s original paintings or drawings.

The Florida volume appeared in
small folio in 1591 with Latin text. A German edition was printed soon after,
in that same year. There is a reference on the title page to this volume being
‘the second part of America’, even though there was no reference to a ‘first
part of America’ in the previous Virginia volume. This suggests that only
after realising the enormous popularity of the Virginia volume did de Bry
conceive of an on-going series relating to America. This ‘second part of America’ was quickly followed by ‘the third part’, illustrating voyages to Brazil. The original data used for this publication, however, had already been in print for some
years14 and, although it contained a few
woodcut illustrations from which de Bry’s copperplates were derived, they
served only as simple guides to some of his far more elaborate transcriptions.
But de Bry’s volume included many other copperplates too, inspired only by the
descriptions in the original text. A decorative folding map, whose geography
was partly derived from the lower section of Ortelius’s ‘Ameriae Sive Novi
Orbis’, was also included. This volume was first published with Latin text in
1592 and then with German text the following year. Although the name of de
Bry’s bookseller, Sigismund Feyerabend, appeared on the title page to the first
edition of Part III, because he had died in that same year subsequent volumes
omitted his name. De Bry had evidently decided to incorporate the selling part
of the operation into his own engraving and publishing business. Henceforth,
he and his family became known, not only as engravers and publishers but
booksellers too.

Whereas Part III is comparable
at least in its splendid appearance with the two previous volumes, the
substance of its contents are inferior. This is because, not only is the
textual information it contains simply a re-issue of previously published works
but also because most of the illustrations are principally the invention of the
engraver, inspired only by descriptions and woodcuts in the original text.
With a few exceptions, this same practice was followed for the next fifty years
in all of deBry’s subsequent publications.

The source data from which de
Bry was to obtain information for the next three parts of his series about America,
was a little book, written by an Italian adventurer,Girolamo Benzoni15,
who travelled extensively from 1541 to 1555 throughout the West Indies, Central
and South America. On his return to Italy he published an account of his experiences,
along with a few woodcut illustrations and a loose history, taken from Spanish
sources, of some of the first Europeans in the New World. Benzoni’s book first
appeared in print with Italian text in 1565 and, being popular, was subsequently
re-issued in several other languages before de Bry decided to publish and illustrate
it himself. This he did in three separate parts and the first of these, Part
IV of his America series, appeared in small folio in 1594 and contained an engraved
title page, with 24 plates, loosely derived from some of the text and woodcut
illustrations contained in Benzoni’s original work. Also included in this volume
was a wonderful folding map of the West Indies, whose origin is unknown. Even
though the embellishments are clearly de Bry’s own style, he was certainly no
cartographer so he must have had access to manuscript data, not now extant,
on which to base the geography of the map.

To this volume, de Bry also
added a set of important illustrations not found in Benzoni. These were
re-engraved from four allegorical pictures found in a rare continental picture
atlas of America, which is believed to have been first published in Antwerp
about 158515.5. In de Bry’s volume they appear
in contre-épreuve and on a slightly smaller scale than originally issued.

The next part of Benzoni’s
book formed Part V of de Bry’s America series. By way of introduction to this
volume, he included a medallion portrait of Columbus, beneath which appeared
the words:

The king and queen of Spain commissioned a leading artist of the day to paint a portrait of Columbus so there would be
some memory of him if he failed to return. I obtained the original of this
portrait recently … and I have had it etched in bronze by my son, which I offer
to you here with this book.

Although there still are in existence
many early portraits of Columbus, all are thought to have been painted posthumously.
If de Bry’s claim is true, therefore: this engraving may depict the great explorer’s
appearance more accurately than all others.

Also within this volume there
is an engraved title page and 22 plates, all of which are derived from the
text or woodcuts in Benzoni’s original book. There is also a folding map
of New Spain, which has clearly been derived from the cartography of Ortelius16,
although Bry had evidently added his own embellishments. The style of the
plates, however, is distinct and perhaps not quite as fluent as that of the
plates in the previous volumes. From this it might be inferred that they were
engraved by one of de Bry’s sons, probably the elder, Johann Theodore, on whom
he must have increasingly begun to rely for the running of the business. The
text accompanying the Columbus portrait, quoted above, also supports this
view.

De Bry was about 67 when this
volume was published and he was feeling the strain that this rapidly developing
publishing business was beginning to demand of him relatively late in his
life. In the first four years, since its inception, no less than eighteen
volumes, making up the first four parts, had been issued. In the next four years,
which were to be the last of his life, only eleven volumes were issued, making
up the next three parts. Even though, it must be admitted, this is still a
considerable output by most standards, it represents a 39% reduction in volumes
and a 25% reduction in parts, on the first four years.

Part VI contains an engraved
title page and 28 plates, probably also engraved by his son, Johann Theodore,
from that part of Benzoni’s text, which described the conquest of Peru. Along with these went a folding plan of Cuzco, derived from one of Ramusio’s
bird’s-eye views17 and a map derived from the Western Hemisphere section of Plancius’s World Map18, both of which had the
de Bry embellishments added in. The next volume, Part VII, was first published
in German in 1597. It is different from the others in that it does not contain
any new illustrations. Apart from the engraved title page, which used the same
plate as that illustrated in Part III, and a single illustration, which had
also appeared in Part III, it contains only a re-issue of text already
published 30 years earlier, describing voyages to Brazil and the Rio de la Plata19.

By the time this volume
appeared in print, de Bry was 69 and there were signs that the ever increasing
demand for such sumptuously illustrated volumes about the New World, was taking
its toll on his health. As a fellow Protestant and good friend of de Bry’s,
the eminent Pierre Joly, Sieur de Bionville, wrote of him:

‘… now almost seventy years of
age, and at a time when men are unfitted for more laborious actions, he still
pursues his former skills. Least he grow benumbed with unfruitful ease, he
spends all his days on his engravings and typographical works, although he is
daily weakened with gout and his hands and fingers are contracted into knots.’

On March 27th 1598,
the year following the publication of the German edition of Part VII, de Bry
closed his tired eyes for the last time. At the time of his death an edition
with Latin text was being prepared for publication the following year. So too
were both the German and Latin editions of Part VIII , which was to described
voyages to the Americas by Drake, Cavendish and Ralegh. And, no doubt, during
the final days of his life, de Bry had been discussing with members of his
family several other publishing projects.

The most important of these,
in fact, had already been started and comprised a completely new parallel
series of volumes, illustrating voyages and travels to the East Indies. This
series was, no doubt, brought about by the appearance in print of a rival
publication, which described voyages and travels of the Portuguese to the East Indies20
and it had been published two years before de Bry’s death, by the Dutchman, Jan
Huygen van Linschoten. Because it was comparable in its quality and appearance
to the de Bry publications, it must have been seen by the de Bry’s as a serious
threat to their hitherto unrivalled position throughout Europe as illustrators
and publishers of voyages and travels.

Surely it was no coincidence,
therefore, that within a year of the appearance of this rival publication and
the year before Theodore de Bry’s death, his family had produced the first of
this new series of voyages and travels to the East Indies, with German text,
followed a year later by the Latin version. The ‘East India’ series, as they
are sometimes called, were also published in folio but in a slightly smaller
page size than the America volumes. In order to distinguish the East India
series from his America series, the two parallel sets subsequently became known
among bibliophiles as de Bry’s Petits Voyages and his Grands Voyages,
respectively.

After Theodore de Bry’s death,
the business was at first run by his son, Johann Theodore and then by his
grandson, Matthäus Merian and grandson-in-law, William Fitzer. Exactly what
part de Bry’s widow and his other son played in the business is unclear but
they certainly seemed to have retained some interest. After all, it must have
become a very profitable venture for the whole family. Together, they
continued to publish volumes of the Grands and Petits Voyages for
another 46 years. The last volume, a third edition of the Part IV of the America series, finally appeared in print in 1644.

In all, fourteen parts in German,
thirteen in Latin, one in English and one in French, make up the Grands Voyages.
To these must be added the ‘Elenchus’, published in 1634 by Merian, which
was a collective title and table of contents of these same volumes. Another
thirteen parts in German and twelve in Latin, made up the Petits Voyages,
along with an appendix to the First Part, published separately both in Latin
and German. Both the Grands and Petits Voyages together comprise
fifty-seven parts and make up a complete set of de Bry’s ‘Voyages and Travels’.

Only a few of the finest
libraries in the world possess complete copies of such sets but as one
antiquarian bookseller, who for years specialised in the de Bry publications,
wrote rather discouragingly 21:

By the time
the De Bry collector has arrived at the profound and happy stage of securing a
complete straight set, he begins to realise that he has so far barely touched
the fringe of the subject, and is only at the
commencement of his real quest.He finds that he has merely laid the
foundations, as it were, on which to build the superstructure of a really fine
Collection of De Bry. It suddenly dawns on him that, if he has caught the De
Bry fever, his “appetite had grown by what it fed on”, and become insatiable.
Having crossed the Rubicon, he must needs go on and endeavour to add to his
Collection every other known edition. With renewed hopes and with his
ambitions fired anew, he again sets out in search of the thirty-five or forty
additional parts which still have to be secured to complete a set of all the
editions of every part.

But if the acquisition of
the original fifty-seven parts had proved an arduous task, it was nothing to
the difficulties which now have to be surmounted, for they increase tenfold,
nay even a hundredfold, as the set approaches nearer to completion…

This was written more than
fifty years ago in days of fruitful harvest for the antiquarian book collector.
Since then the search has widened to include, not just ‘thirty-five or forty
additional parts’ but seventy-five, no less, and still the insurmountable
treasurehunt goes on. Below are listed chronologically all the editions,
issues, states and variances that have been identified to date by the writer.
In preparing this list I have included, among other sources, all the volumes
described in the two most important bibliographical authorities on the subject22,
yet other editions may still come to light.

The difficulties intrinsic to
the exercise of identifying the various editions, issues, states and variances
of de Bry are so considerable that they may never allow the final word to be
written on the subject. Not least of these difficulties, are those arising
from an incompatibility between describing printed books that involve both a
relief letterpress process for the text and an intaglio engraved process for
the copperplate illustration. As this subject is of a specialist nature, I
shall here make only passing reference to it. 23 In the case of most of
the de Bry illustrations, with titles above and descriptive texts below, both
processes have been used on the same page and they would have had to be
printed, not only on different machines but possibly also in different
workshops and sometimes at different times too.

This has led to problems of
poor plate registration with text, incompatibility of plate and text (which,
when spotted by the publisher, was sometimes corrected by ‘overlaying’ the
wrong plate with the correct one to which the text referred) and inversions of
plates to text, which again could be corrected by overlaying. Then there are
plates that were subsequently added to, altered or re-worked, became cracked or
even replaced by completely new or re-engraved plates. To the writer’s
knowledge, none of these subjects, with respect to de Bry’s Voyages and
Travels, has been analysed comprehensively. This is probably, not simply because
of the enormity of the task but also because of the scarcity of the source
material.

Because there was evidently
little effective copyright law in de Bry’s day, plagiarism was a practice
common among publishers at that time. Although de Bry seems to have been
incensed by the practice and feared he might become a victim himself, even he
was not exempt from plagiarising other people’s work. It must have been to
plagiarism that he was referring, when he wrote, ‘to the gently reader’, at
the beginning of Part I of the America series:

I hartlye Request thee, that
yf any seeke to Countrefaict thes my bookx, (for in this dayes many are so
malicious that they seeke to gayne by other men labours) thow wouldest give noe
credit unto suche counterfaited Drawghte. For dyvers secret marks lye hiddin
in my pictures, which wil breede Confusion unless they bee well observed.

Although some of these ‘secret
marks’ have been identified in various bibliographies, there are probably many
others that, even to this day, have not come to light. One study24
highlighted no less than six in Part I of the America series alone, of which
the illustration below is just one example:

In their desire to make up
what they believe to be perfect volumes of de Bry, some bibliophiles who were
not aware of these ‘secret marks’ have combined plates with their associated
text from two or more imperfect copies that are not compatible. The results
have turned out to be hybrids of plates from different editions of the same
parts, which do not match. This practice may even have been initiated by
members of the de Bry household themselves when stocks of some plates ran down
and had to be made up from other miscellaneous stock. As stocks of the earlier
parts ran out, individual parts were sometimes re-printed to make up complete
sequences of all the parts to date, and these were then sometimes bound
together collectively into a single volume. It was not uncommon, for example,
to find within the same covers the first four, five or six parts of either the
Grands Voyages or the Petits Voyages, then subsequently perhaps, the
first nine or ten parts. This exercise had the curious effect of making plates
from the earlier parts less rare than those from the later parts because the
earlier parts were reprinted more often.

By the early sixteen hundreds
the family estate, which would have included stocks of unbound text and plates,
became fragmented, probably by indiscriminate distribution among de Bry’s
descendants through inheritance. The younger son, Johann Israel, for example,
died in 1611 and soon after his older brother, Johann Theodore, moved to
Oppenheim. From there he published a number of the voyages and travels, even
though he still seems to have maintained a connection with Frankfurt. This led
to further confusion and the replacement of original plates by completely new
ones or the re-engravings of old ones, sometimes in contre-épreuve,to
make up complete parts. Then, subsequently, there were ‘Abridgements’ of the
original volumes, which were published by de Bry’s descendants – at first by
Ziegler and then by Gottfriedt25. These contained many of the original
plates, but which had to be re-set without titles into continuous text on both
recto and verso and some had to be re-worked or re-engraved. To the serious
collector, though, the Abridgements are of far less interest and value than the
volumes or plates from the original parts, mainly on account of their inferior
quality and layout.

Despite all these
difficulties, for anyone who is brave enough to embark on the bitter-sweet
voyage of starting a collection of de Bry, the writer recommends he or she
first heed well the words of one bibliographer26 who had gained more
experience than most in this wonderful foolhardy pursuit:

What a bibliographical chord am
I striking, in the mention of the Travels of De Bry! What a “Peregrination”
does the possession of a copy of his labours imply! What toil, difficulty,
perplexity, anxiety, and vexation attend the collector – be he young or old –
who sets his heart upon a Perfect De Bry! How many have started on this
pursuit, with gay spirit and well-replenished purses, but have turned from it
in despair, and abandoned it in utter hopelessness of achievement!’

These days, the engraved
illustrations are far more accessible to the collector than complete and
perfect bound volumes. Because many of these illustrations, with their
associated titles above and descriptive texts below, represent historical
events in the history and discovery of distant lands, they have become collectors
items in their own right. Whether they are sought for their historical,
geographical or ethnographic content, or simply as examples of early
copperplate art, they make attractive wall-pieces in their own right and are
worthy of mounting and framing.

De Bry’s illustrations continue
to be reproduced ubiquitously in historical reference works of non-fiction right
up to the present day and, although many may be familiar to the general public,
comparatively little is known about their origin and author. Theodore de Bry’s
legacy is clearly a very considerable one: for the sheer number of engravings
and sumptuously illustrated volumes of voyages and travels, his publishing venture
has remained almost unrivalled to the present day but for reliability and accuracy
of content, his work must be treated with more caution. A simple example will
suffice to illustrate the point. It concerns his transcription of John White’s
painting, in his very first publication of the Grands Voyages:

Here, it can be seen that the
original painting to the left, has become altogether more romanticised in the
engraved transcription to the right. Consequently, some of its indigenous
reality has been lost. Maybe this is a harsh criticism of work produced at a
time when art and science were inseparable. However, it shows that de Bry’s
aim was that his work should be accepted by the general public, more for its
appearance than for the objective information it conveyed. Any such
transformation of source data would otherwise have been entirely unwarranted. It
is a feature that pervades all of de Bry’s work.

Nevertheless, more than
anything else, it was the ‘indefatigable labours’ of Theodore de Bry, more than
four hundred years ago, that gave birth to this publishing venture and caused
it to grow to monumental proportions. Yet there are other unsung heroes to the
saga. Those most worthy of mention are that remarkable French painter, Jacques
le Moyne, whose paintings of Florida Indians haunt de Bry’s engravings in Part
II of the Grands Voyages, and inspired him to write at the outset to his
work:

I have in hand the Historye of
Florida … A Victorye, doubtless so Rare, as I thinke the like hath not ben
heard nor seene.

Alas, none of le Moyne’s
original ‘Historye’ survived26.5, so we can only speculate on its
real importance . If, however, his watercolours of European flora and fauna27,
which did survive, were anything to go by he would probably have been
remembered as a pioneer ethnographic artist of unrivalled skills. Then there
was his English counterpart: the artist, John White, whose very creditable
watercolours of the ‘Virginia’ Indians, painted twenty years later, became
known to the public only through de Bry’s first publication. Credit for helping
to launch de Bry’s publishing project should also go to Richard Hakluyt, whose
vision and encouragement transformed the status of de Bry, almost overnight,
from an engraver into a publisher of unrivalled popularity and success.

But, if we agree with de Bry: that
famous men shine forth … by unwearied pains, indefatigable labour and the most
burning love of truth, then the greatest honour of all should go to that
exceptional renaissance man, Thomas Hariot, whose epitaph this should really
be. Although his remarkably informative, yet prosaic little book about
Virginia went almost unnoticed at first, when the text was re-issued two years
later with White’s illustrations of Virginia Indians added in, along with
Hariot’s map of ‘Virginia’ – a map which, incidentally, has been described as
‘the most carefully detailed piece of cartography for any part of North America
to be made in the sixteenth century’28 – it resulted in a publication, whose
presentation almost rivalled in beauty the importance of its content. In any
event, it was largely because of Hariot that this first part of the Grands
Voyages alone kindled, among the educated elite of Europe, such a thirst
for knowledge about the lesser known parts of the world that de Bry was never
again able to quench their thirst equally in more than fifty subsequent years
of publishing.

6 Waggenaer, L Sphieghel der Zeevaert, Leyden
1584 was the first edition in Latin. De Bry worked on the plates for the
English edition, called The Mariners’Mirrour, which was published in London in 1588, the year
after he began the engravings.

7 This is the first English translation of R de
Laudonnière’s: ‘L’histoire notable de la Floride …’, published posthumously the
previous year in Paris. 1586. It describes, not only the 1564 voyage under
Laudonnière’s command, but the pioneering voyage of 1562 under Ribaut’s
command, and the two subsequent voyages, viz. Ribaut’s return voyage in 1565
and the Gourgues’ vendetta voyage of 1582.

8 ‘Diverse voyages, touching the discoverie of America
…’, London 1582 – a work of extreme rarity and interest because it was intended
to introduce the ‘English nation to establish colonies in America’.

9 R. Hakluyt: ‘The Princall Navigations, Voiages and
Discoveries of the English Nation …’, London 1589, which contains no less than
825 pages of text, maps and many voyages to the Americas.

10 Actually, they went to the Pamlico Sound region of
North Carolina and Hariot’s surprisingly accurate map, illustrated with
embellishments in de Bry’s first volume, covers the region from Chesapeake Bay
to Cape Fear.

11 T. Hariot: ‘A briefe and true report of the new found
land of Virginia’, London 1588. Comprising only 23 leaves in small quarto,
this inconspicuous little book is, for its time, of outstanding merit in its
objective presentation of data.

11.5 The Spanish, who by this time had explored
extensively throughout the Americas, were still secretive about their
discoveries and publication in Spain was restrictive.

12 A comparison, where possible, of John White’s
original watercolours with the copperplates in de Bry’s ‘Virginia’ volume shows
the engraver used a certain amount of artistic licence and thereby considerably
diluted the authenticity of the originals.

13 Appendix IV of ‘A Foothold in Florida’ based on a
translation by S. Lawson, with annotations and appendices by W J Faupel, East
Grinstead 1992, goes some way to explaining the enigma.

13.5 Some believe a small watercolour in the New York
Public Library is the original of Plate 8, from this volume but there are
reasons for thinking the converse. See Ibid, footnote 41, p 168

15 G. Benzoni ‘La Historia del Mondo Nuovo …’, Venice
1565. Although Church [No.153] says it was a subsequent Latin edition: ‘Novae
Novi Orbis Historiæ …’, Geneva 1578, whose text de Bry used, this does not
appear to have the woodcuts from which de Bry derived some of his copperplates,
as found in the first edition.

19 The text was taken from part of Ulrich Schmidt
[Schmidel] and others ‘Ander theil dieses Welt-buchs von Schiff-fahrten …’,
which had been published in Frankfurt in 1567 by, none other than de Bry’s
ex-bookseller, Sigmund Feirabends.

20 J H van Linschoten ‘Itinerario, Voyage ofte
Schipvaert …Oost ofte Portugales Indien …’, Amsterdam 1596. This contained 36
plates and six folding mapswhich, in quality, were probably considered comparable
if not finer than any of the de Bry’s publications to date.

22 E D Church ‘A Catalogue of Books relating to the
Discovery and early History of North and South America’, New York, 1907 [No.
140-246], and: J Sabin ‘A Dictionary of Books relating to America’, New York,
1868 [8784]. Earlier attempts at cataloguing de Bry include the Earl of
Crawford’s Bibliotheca Lindensiana, Collations and Notes, No 3, of 1884
and A. G. Camus’ Mémoire sur la Collection des Grands et Petits Voyages,
of 1802 but they are not so comprehensive.

26.5 A painting in the New York Public Library, from which
Plate 8, from Part II of the Grands Voyages is thought to derive, is
believed by some to be an original le Moyne painting but ‘A Foothold in
Florida’, 1992, footnote 41, p168 suggests the painting derives from the engraving.

27 Many are now in the Natural History Museum, London:
see: P. Hulton ‘The Work of Jacques le Moyne de Morgues – a Huguenot Artist in
France, Floridaand England’, British Museum, London 1977, which has
good reproductions of all le Moyne’s known works.